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1831 Nat Turner launched a short-lived, violent slave rebellion in Virginia.
1858 The first ...

1996 President Bill Clinton signed welfare legislation ending guaranteed cash payments to the poor and demanding work from recipients.

2003 Alabama's chief justice, Roy Moore, was suspended for his refusal to obey a federal court order to remove his Ten Commandments monument from the rotunda of his courthouse.

2005 The last Jewish settlers left the Gaza Strip, ending decades of Israel's turbulent occupation.

2008 The U.S. carried out airstrikes in western Herat province in Afghanistan; according to a later U.S. estimate, the raid resulted in the deaths of 33 civilians and 22 militants. (The Afghan government and U.N. investigators said that 90 civilians had died.)

1775 Britain's King George III proclaimed the American colonies in a state of open rebellion.

1914 Japan declared war on Germany in World War I.

1926 Silent film star Rudolph Valentino died at age 31.

1939 Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union signed a non-aggression treaty.

1960 Broadway librettist Oscar Hammerstein II died at age 65.

1972 The Republican National Convention, meeting in Miami Beach, Fla., nominated Vice President Spiro T. Agnew for a second term.

1979 Soviet dancer Alexander Godunov defected while the Bolshoi Ballet was on tour in New York.

1989 Yusuf Hawkins, an African-American teenager, was shot dead after he and his friends were confronted by white youths in a Brooklyn neighborhood.

2000 An estimated 51 million viewers watched the first season finale of the reality show "Survivor" on CBS. Contestant Richard Hatch won the $1 million prize.

2003 Former priest John Geoghan, the convicted child molester whose prosecution sparked the sex abuse scandal that shook the Roman Catholic Church nationwide, was killed by a fellow inmate in a Massachusetts prison.

2005 Israeli forces evicted militant holdouts from two Jewish settlements, completing a historic withdrawal from the Gaza Strip and part of the West Bank.

2008 Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama introduced his choice of running mate, Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, before a crowd outside the Old State Capitol in Springfield, Ill.

2006 The International Astronomical Union declared that Pluto was no longer a planet, demoting it to the status of a "dwarf planet."

2007 A judge in Inverness, Fla., sentenced John Evander Couey to death for kidnapping 9-year-old Jessica Lunsford, raping her and burying her alive.

2007 James Ford Seale, a reputed Ku Klux Klansman, was sentenced to three life terms for his role in the 1964 abduction and murder of two black teenagers in Mississippi.

2007 The NFL indefinitely suspended Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick without pay for his involvement in dogfighting. (He was reinstated with conditions in July 2009 after serving 18 months in prison.)

1922 The first radio commercial aired on WEAF in New York City. It was a 10-minute advertisement for the Queensboro Realty Co., which had paid $100.

1947 Legendary bullfighter Manolete was mortally wounded by a bull during a fight in Linares, Spain; he died the following day.

1955 Emmett Till, an African-American teenager from Chicago, was abducted from his uncle's home in Money, Miss., by two white men after he was accused of whistling at a white woman. He was found murdered three days later.

1968 Police and anti-war demonstrators clashed in the streets of Chicago as the Democratic National Convention nominated Hubert H. Humphrey for president.

1981 John W. Hinckley Jr. pleaded innocent to charges of attempting to kill President Ronald Reagan.

1996 Democrats nominated President Bill Clinton for a second term at their national convention in Chicago.

1996 Britain's Prince Charles and Princess Diana were divorced after 15 years of marriage.